Zorra
Zorra's JournalCheck out this great post from David Swanson, Dec-24-08 11:18 AM
Trying to squeeze any sort of peace on earth out of our government in Washington has been a steep uphill climb for years. For the most part we no longer have representatives in Congress, because of the corruption of money, the weakness of the media, and the strength of parties. There are not 535 opinions on Capitol Hill on truly important matters, but 2. Our supposed representatives work for their party leaders, not for us. Luckily, one of the two parties claims to want to work for us.
When the Democrats were in the minority and out of the White House, they told us they wanted to work for us but needed to be in the majority. So, in 2006, we put them there. Then they told us that they really wished they could work for us but they needed bigger majorities and the White House. So, in 2008, we gave them those things, and largely deprived them of two key excuses for inaction. We took away the veto excuse and came very close to taking away the filibuster excuse, and -- in fact -- the filibuster excuse could be taken away completely if the Democrats didn't want to keep it around.
This is not to say that either excuse was ever sensible. The two most important things the 110th Congress refused to do (ceasing to fund illegal wars, and impeaching war criminals) did not require passing legislation, so filibusters and vetoes were not relevant. But the Democrats in Congress, and the Republicans, and the media, and the White House all pretended that wars could only be ended by legislation, so the excuses for not passing legislation loomed large. The veto excuse will be gone on January 20th. The filibuster excuse could be gone by January 6th if Senator Harry Reid wanted it gone.
The filibuster excuse works like this. Any 41 senators can vote No on "cloture", that is on bringing a bill to a vote, and that bill will never come to a vote, and anything the House of Representatives has done won't matter. Any of the other 59 senators, the 435 House members, the president, the vice president, television pundits, and newspaper reporters can blame the threat of filibuster for anything they fail to do.
Now, the Senate itself is and always has been and was intended to be an anti-democratic institution. It serves no purpose that is not or could not be more democratically accomplished by the House alone. The Senate should simply be eliminated by Constitutional Amendment. But the filibuster is the most anti-democratic tool of the Senate, and can be eliminated without touching the Constitution, which does not mention it. If you take 41 senators from the 21 smallest states, you can block any legislation with a group of multi-millionaires elected by 11.2 percent of the American public. That fact is a national disgrace that should be remedied as quickly as possible.
The filibuster was created by accident when the Senate eliminated a seemingly redundant practice of voting on whether to vote. Senators then discovered, after a half-century of surviving just fine without the filibuster, that they could block votes by talking forever. In 1917 the Senate created a rule allowing a vote by two-thirds of those voting, to end a filibuster. In 1949 they changed the rule to require two-thirds of the entire Senate membership. In 1959 they changed it back. And in 1975 they changed the rule to allow three-fifths of the Senators sworn into office to end a filibuster and force a vote. Filibustering no longer requires giving long speeches. It only requires threatening to do so. The use of such threats has exploded over the past 10 years, dominating the decision-making process of our government and effectively eliminating the possibility of truly populist or progressive legislation emerging from Congress. This has happened at the same time that the forces of money, media, and party have led the Democrats in both houses to view the filibuster excuse as highly desirable, rather than as an impediment.
Were the Democrats serious about eliminating the filibuster excuse, they would either take every step possible to get 60 senators into their caucus, or they would change the rule requiring 60 senators for cloture. Possible steps to reach that magic number of 60 would include ensuring the closest thing possible at this point to honest and verifiable outcomes in the Minnesota senate election and every other senate election of this past November, immediately seating replacement senators for Obama, Biden, and Democrats appointed and confirmed for other offices, appointing Republican senators from states with Democratic governors to key jobs in the Obama administration and immediately seating their replacements, and providing Washington, D.C., with a House member and two senators (this last approach changing the magic number to 61 and potentially providing the 60th and 61st Democrats). Simpler and more certain would be simply changing the rule, specifically Senate Rule 22, which reads in part:
"'Is it the sense of the Senate that the debate shall be brought to a close?' And if that question shall be decided in the affirmative by three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn -- except on a measure or motion to amend the Senate rules, in which case the necessary affirmative vote shall be two-thirds of the Senators present and voting -- then said measure, motion, or other matter pending before the Senate, or the unfinished business, shall be the unfinished business to the exclusion of all other business until disposed of."
This would seem to suggest that it takes 60 senators to block a filibuster and 66 senators (if 100 are present, otherwise fewer) to end the power of 60 senators to block filibusters. But that's not the whole story. William Greider recently explained:
"In 1975 the filibuster issue was revived by post-Watergate Democrats frustrated in their efforts to enact popular reform legislation like campaign finance laws. Senator James Allen of Alabama, the most conservative Democrat in the Senate and a skillful parliamentary player, blocked them with a series of filibusters. Liberals were fed up with his delaying tactics. Senator Walter Mondale pushed a campaign to reduce the threshold from sixty-seven votes to a simple majority of fifty-one. In a parliamentary sleight of hand, the liberals broke Allen's filibuster by a majority vote, thus evading the sixty-seven-vote rule. (Senate rules say you can't change the rules without a cloture vote, but the Constitution says the Senate sets its own rules. As a practical matter, that means the majority can prevail whenever it decides to force the issue.) In 1975 the presiding officer during the debate, Vice President Rockefeller, first ruled with the liberals on a motion to declare Senator Allen out of order. When Allen appealed the "ruling of the chair" to the full Senate, the majority voted him down. Nervous Senate leaders, aware they were losing the precedent, offered a compromise. Henceforth, the cloture rule would require only sixty votes to stop a filibuster."
If Vice President Biden's assistance appears needed for this, it can wait until January 21st. If it waits longer than that, the credibility of the filibuster excuse will collapse, because the Democrats will be publicly admitting that they prefer to keep that excuse around.
If the Minnesota election remains undecided, cloture may require one fewer vote under current rules, but the Democrats will have one fewer senator. The outcome of that race will only be decisive if the Democrats refuse to change the filibuster rule and pursue other attempts to achieve a caucus able to vote for cloture.
If, through one means or another, the Democrats eliminate the filibuster excuse, our job will be to organize and agitate immediately to take full advantage of this rare opportunity for actual representative government. Greider proposes reducing to 55 percent of the Senate the number of senators needed for cloture. I propose reducing it to 50 percent plus one. Either way, nobody is proposing that a minority be empowered to decide anything, only that a majority finally be permitted to (even to the extent allowed by an anti-democratic body like the U.S. Senate in which both Wyoming and California have the same number of senators). Should that happen, all I can say to Wall Street and the military industrial complex is: get ready to be shocked and awed!
If the Democrats choose to keep the filibuster excuse around, our job will be to overwhelm them and the media with our refusal to believe it. Yes, we'll also want to lobby for peace, justice, jobs, green energy, and health care. But we'll never get them unless we insist on pressuring the Senate on this seemingly arcane little matter of passing bills, or what we might call a campaign for "No taxation without representation."
http://election.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x4711992
If only...
A young woman from an extremely deranged, bigoted RW religious family in Westboro
married a young man from Santa Fe. On their wedding night, the young man revealed to the young woman that he was a virgin. The new bride was horrified, and without another word, packed her things, and returned to the home of her parents.
When she arrived at her parent's home, her mother was very alarmed, and asked her daughter about what had happened. The young woman then informed her mother about how her new husband had told her that he was still a virgin. Her mother was incredulous, laughed bitterly, and said:
"You poor thing! You did the right thing, sweetie. If he's not even good enough for his own family, he's certainly not good enough for you".
I don't know anything, I believe that I apparently use my brain to apparently assess my apparent
environment and apparent existence, but I don't know, maybe not. Who knows?
There are no known knowns. This is something I believe I don't know. There may unknowns, but I don't know what these are. That is to say, there are things that I know I don't know, but this is something I don't know. There are also unknown unknowns I don't know, but I don't know. Therefore, I know nothing, because I don't know anything, I suppose.
I think I am, therefore I am...I think, but I really don't know.
That said, would you like what appears to me to be a nice homemade cookie that I believe I apparently baked?
I disagree. Cuba has a substantially greater number of doctors, per capita, than any other country.
Cuba 6.7
United States 2.4
Canada 2.1
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.MED.PHYS.ZS
The Cuban government operates a national health system and assumes fiscal and administrative responsibility for the health care of all its citizens.[1] There are no private hospitals or clinics as all health services are government-run. The present Minister for Public Health is Roberto Morales Ojeda.
----
In 2000, Secretary General of the United Nations Kofi Annan stated that "Cuba should be the envy of many other nations" adding that achievements in social development are impressive given the size of its gross domestic product per capita. "Cuba demonstrates how much nations can do with the resources they have if they focus on the right priorities - health, education, and literacy."{88] The Kaiser Family Foundation, a non-governmental organization that evaluated Cuba’s healthcare system in 2000-1 described Cuba as "a shining example of the power of public health to transform the health of an entire country by a commitment to prevention and by careful management of its medical resources"[89] President of the World Bank James Wolfensohn also praised Cuba's healthcare system in 2001, saying that "Cuba has done a great job on education and health", at the annual meeting of the Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Wayne Smith, former head of the US Interests Section in Havana identified "the incredible dedication" of Cubans to healthcare, adding that "Doctors in Cuba can make more driving cabs and working in hotels, but they don't. They're just very dedicated".[90] Dr. Robert N. Butler, president of the International Longevity Center in New York and a Pulitzer Prize-winning author on aging, has traveled to Cuba to see firsthand how doctors are trained. He said a principal reason that some health standards in Cuba approach the high American level is that the Cuban system emphasizes early intervention. Clinic visits are free, and the focus is on preventing disease rather than treating it.[91] Furthermore, London's The Guardian newspaper lauded Cuba's public healthcare system for what it viewed as its high quality in a Sept. 12, 2007 article.[92]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_Cuba
IMO, the key is right here:
"Cuba demonstrates how much nations can do with the resources they have if they focus on the right priorities - health, education, and literacy."
If you want Fox News, or other RW owned US MSM sources, sorry, they have no cred with me.
BTW, I'm not your mother. I'll post this information for you, but this will be the last time. I strongly suggest learning how to use a search engine to get background and information on subjects you are ignorant of, if indeed you are interested in having informed opinions about the world. www.google.com is an easy place to begin, you can even learn to post linked sources of information on DU once you learn to use a search engine. That way, you will no longer have to rely on others to provide information for you.
Good luck!
SAN ANTONIO DEL TÁCHIRA, Venezuela, Dec 20 2009 (IPS) - “We’re second-class citizens, victims of a war that hasn’t broken out,” said José Duque from behind the wheel of a car carrying passengers from San Cristóbal, in southwestern Venezuela, to the border with the northeastern region of Colombia, near the city of Cúcuta.
snip---
A community leader from the city of San Antonio del Táchira, who asked to be identified only by his first name, Carlos, told IPS that Colombian “mafias” like the Black Eagles, made up of former members of far-right paramilitary groups in Colombia, “have controlled the smuggling of gasoline, food and plastic products from Venezuela to Colombia for years, and also the smuggling of goods from there to here.”
snip---
“Here, almost everyone pays a ‘tax’ to the paramilitary mafias. This bakery where we’re having a coffee pays one for sure, the ice cream place across the street too, the same as all the stores on this block,” said Roberto, another local resident and member of a political party that backs Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.
One of the town’s main streets runs directly onto the Simón Bolívar bridge, which connects Venezuela and Colombia across the Táchira River (reduced to a trickle during the current dry season). The narrow bridge carries an endless flow of cars, trucks, motorcycles, bicycles and pedestrians between the two countries, as border guards on both sides look on with apparent indifference.
http://www.ipsnews.net/2009/12/venezuela-colombia-paramilitaries-rule-border-area/
Right-wing paramilitary groups in Colombia are the parties responsible for most of the human rights violations in the latter half of the ongoing Colombian Armed Conflict. According to several international human rights and governmental organizations, right-wing paramilitary groups have been responsible for at least 70 to 80% of political murders in Colombia per year, with the remainder committed by leftist guerrillas and government forces. Paramilitary groups control the large majority of the illegal drug trade of cocaine and other substances together with the main Colombian drug cartels, especially in terms of trafficking and processing activities. The first paramilitary groups were organized by the Colombian military following recommendations made by U.S. military counterinsurgency advisers who were sent to Colombia during the Cold War to combat leftist political activists and armed guerrilla groups. The development of later paramilitary groups has also involved elite landowners, drug traffickers, members of the security forces, politicians and multinational corporations. Paramilitary violence today is principally targeted towards peasants, unionists, indigenous people, human rights workers, teachers and left-wing political activists or their supporters. The paramilitaries claim to be acting in opposition to revolutionary Marxist-Leninist guerrilla forces and their allies among the civilian population.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paramilitarism_in_Colombia
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/venezuela-sends-paratroopers-to-site-of-unrest-1.2545816
Various remnants of the Colombian paramilitary group the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) are present in Venezuela, using the country to run trafficking operations, process cocaine, and stash drugs and arms. It also serves as a hideout for their leaders, many of whom have been arrested in Venezuela in recent years.
The presence of these paramilitary descendants, which the Colombian government calls "criminal bands" (bandas criminales - BACRIM), has been blamed for a rise in violence. The Venezuelan authorities complain that they are destabilizing the country and are carrying out kidnapping, extortion and drug trafficking in border states like Tachira, Apure, and Zulia.
The AUC was an alliance between dozens of self-defense groups that trafficked drugs, terrorized civilians, and waged war with the Colombian rebel groups the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN). Despite their right-wing ideology, the AUC originally praised the election of Hugh Chavez in 1998, sending him a congratulatory letter which stated that "as a military man" Chavez would likely "put things in order" in Venezuela. However, the AUC's rhetoric would soon change completely, and they publicly labeled the Venezuelan president a "defender" of Colombian guerrilla groups.
But the Rastrojos' influence in Venezuela has been in decline as they have lost much of their leadership to captures and arrests, as well as lost ground in their war with Colombia's other main criminal group , the Urabeños. The two groups have clashed in a bid for control of the border state of Tachira for the past few years. Since 2013, however, there have been signs that the Urabeños have been taking control there and in the neighboring Colombian city of Cucuta, giving them access to a primary route for smuggling not only drugs but other contraband, including gasoline.
Venezuela arrests Colombians over Maduro assassination plot
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-22850494
The Venezuelan government says it has arrested nine Colombian right-wing paramilitaries who were plotting to assassinate President Nicolas Maduro.
---snip
Mr Maduro on Sunday posted a message on Twitter saying his government faced "a plot the fascist right supported by violent groups in Colombia".
---snip
The first group, with alleged links to the Rastrojos paramilitary organisation, was arrested in western Tachira state, Mr Rodriguez said.
The six people arrested were named as Elisa Cruz, Pedro Araujo, Arlington Miranda, Jose Israel Echavez, Javier Rodriguez and Giovani Sala.
Though only around 400 miles from Caracas, the area of Tachira has long been a hotbed of opposition support in large part because of its much closer ties to neighboring Colombia. Maduro suggested that the city was under siege by right-wing paramilitaries who were receiving orders from former Colombian president Alvaro Uribe, a longtime foe of the socialist government here.
"There's a rebellious way of thinking here, opposed to everything that happens in Caracas," said local historian Luis Hernández Contreras. Táchira was only one of two states in Venezuela won by Capriles in his October 2012 election against Chávez.
The economic problems that plague Venezuela have hit this border city hardest, as Colombians jump across and buy up price-controlled goods that are already in short supply, to sell for profit back home.
The first unit, a parachute battalion, will be placed on the main highways into the city, but will not enter the city itself. “It’s to reinforce the [existing] units…because we’ve detected Colombians that come to undertake missions as armed paramilitaries in the street riots,” the minister said to press.
Meanwhile the National Bolivarian Guard (GNB) will be used to re-establish order in the city, and thereafter in neighbouring municipalities. The second battalion, of army engineers, will then enter the city to clean it of the burned rubbish, tires, and other damages left by the street barricades. Carrying arms in the state is temporarily banned.
Rodriguez Torres accused San Cristobal’s mayor, Daniel Ceballos, of conspiring in the unrest. The minister said there was evidence that Ceballos had paid for paramilitaries and criminal gangs to get involved in the disorder. President Maduro said on Thursday that police forces must investigate the case, “and if he [Ceballos] should be jailed, he will be jailed”.
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/10386
Sep 2, 2010
Venezuelan labor leader Jose Rozo Lizcano calls for Colombia to pay compensation for the large number of refugees that pour over the border into Venezuela.
Lizcano, who is the head of Venezuelan Federation of Trade and Industry Chambers (Fedecamaras) in border state Tachira, says that the immigrants place a social and economic burden on the government. He warned that situations with many displaced people can become breeding grounds for drug and people trafficking, prostitution, smuggling, and other crimes.
Speaking at a conference in Tachira, the labor leader said that “this social burden cannot continue to be put only on the Venezuelan state, there must be a sacrifice and a joint contribution by Colombia, along with the United Nations and international organizations.”
snip---
Many thousands more have fled to Ecuador or Venezuela to escape the country’s armed conflict. More than 180,000 Colombians have arrived in the country since 2002, according to UNHCR.
On July 22, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez severed diplomatic ties with Colombia, which shares a 2,120-km border with Venezuela, after Bogota accused Caracas of harboring Colombian guerilla chiefs on its soil, a charge vehemently denied by Venezuela.
Some 350 Colombian citizens enter Venezuela every day to escape Colombia's guerillas, paramilitary activities, terrorism and drug trafficking, according to the Association of Colombians in Venezuela.
Over four million Colombians living in Venezuela have the same rights to "food, health, education, and living in peace" as Venezuelan citizens, Finol told the state-owned news agency Agencia Venezolana de Noticias.
On Thursday, Venezuelan Trade Minister Richard Canan and Food Minister Carolos Osorio said the government will guarantee the food supplies in the states bordering Colombia, including Tachira, Zulia and Apure states.
Tascon is a deputy in the National Assembly, which is composed entirely of supporters of socialist President Hugo Chavez following elections last December. Among those killed were more than 40 leaders of peasant organisations, as well as social movement activists and members of Venezuela's armed forces.
Peasant activists have been targeted for assassination since the Chavez government passed a land reform law in 2001 opening the way for the redistribution of land holdings that exceed 5000 hectares and are being left idle or underutilised by their owners. So far, more than 2 million hectares have been redistributed to landless poor farmers.
snip---
On May 7, according to a report in the May 8 Diario Vea, Varela said: "I have sufficient proof to make the accusation that in Tachira there are paramilitaries who have entered Venezuela under the protection of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees." Varela explained that groups of Colombian paramilitaries have threatened legal refugees and forced them to act as agents for the paramilitaries in order to destabilise Venezuela.
https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/33887
etc.
Great news, really glad to hear that. But...
none of us should have to deal with the frustrating maze that is for profit health insurance.
It's such a frustrating, emotional energy blasting waste of time. Most of us have busy lives, and don't need every second of our free time consumed by things like being put on hold for a half hour when trying to find out if our health care needs will be covered, and then struggling with bureaucracy ("I'm going to transfer you to Irma Gardnotagin over in Customer Care"
as you scream while really shitty digitally detracted music begins to play, music that is designed to get you to give up while you are on hold for another half hour waiting for Irma over in Customer Care to pick up as she does her nails while not answering your call for the half hour prescribed in the corporate protocol manual under the section entitled "101 Ways To Make The Mark Customer Give Up Trying So We Can Burn Them And Increase Profits".
As you put speakerphone on and wonder, "Geez, this company made record profits in the gazillions of dollars range last year...you'd think they could hire more staff to expedite customer service!"
One problem (among many problems) people commonly have is not understanding deceptive for profit health insurance terminology. When dealing with for profit health insurance companies, what you don't know can, and probably will, hurt you. For profit health insurance companies rely on customer ignorance for increased profits.
The devil is in the details, and things don't always mean what they appear to say. And even people who are educated, literate, and have relatively high IQ's get duped sometimes. Every US health care provider's intake staff has stories about nightmare time consuming dealings with the deviousness, evasiveness, and doublespeak of for profit health insurance companies. If they can even scam the professionals, imagine what old Mack DeNife in Sales & Marketing does to folks who can't read all that well.
I wonder how much extra profit is generated for these companies per day through customer ignorance and error. I suspect it is millions of dollars, collectively.
Health care in Canada is delivered through a publicly funded health care system, which is mostly free at the point of use and has most services provided by private entities.[2] It is guided by the provisions of the Canada Health Act of 1984.[3] The government assures the quality of care through federal standards. The government does not participate in day-to-day care or collect any information about an individual's health, which remains confidential between a person and his or her physician.[citation needed] Canada's provincially based Medicare systems are cost-effective partly because of their administrative simplicity. In each province each doctor handles the insurance claim against the provincial insurer. There is no need for the person who accesses health care to be involved in billing and reclaim. Private health expenditure accounts for 30% of health care financing.[4]
Competitive practices such as advertising are kept to a minimum, thus maximizing the percentage of revenues that go directly towards care. In general, costs are paid through funding from income taxes. In British Columbia, taxation-based funding is supplemented by a fixed monthly premium which is waived or reduced for those on low incomes.[5] There are no deductibles on basic health care and co-pays are extremely low or non-existent (supplemental insurance such as Fair Pharmacare may have deductibles, depending on income).
A health card is issued by the Provincial Ministry of Health to each individual who enrolls for the program and everyone receives the same level of care.[6] There is no need for a variety of plans because virtually all essential basic care is covered, including maternity and infertility problems. Depending on the province, dental and vision care may not be covered but are often insured by employers through private companies. In some provinces, private supplemental plans are available for those who desire private rooms if they are hospitalized. Cosmetic surgery and some forms of elective surgery are not considered essential care and are generally not covered. These can be paid out-of-pocket or through private insurers. Health coverage is not affected by loss or change of jobs, health care cannot be denied due to unpaid premiums (in BC), and there are no lifetime limits or exclusions for pre-existing conditions.
Pharmaceutical medications are covered by public funds for the elderly or indigent,[7] or through employment-based private insurance. Drug prices are negotiated with suppliers by the federal government to control costs. Family physicians (often known as general practitioners or GPs in Canada) are chosen by individuals. If a patient wishes to see a specialist or is counseled to see a specialist, a referral can be made by a GP. Preventive care and early detection are considered important and yearly checkups are encouraged.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_Canada
Why pay more?
Everybody wants Canadian drugs for one reason: Brand-name meds are cheaper there. A 2012 report found, for example, that a 30-day supply of Cymbalta (used to treat depression or chronic pain) typically costs $149 in the United States, compared with $113 in Canada; Nasonex (used for allergies) was $105 in the U.S. and only $29 in Canada.
These price differences are due to the unique way that the U.S. handles its pharmaceutical marketplace. In most other countries, governments either set pricing caps or negotiate lower prices directly with drugmakers. In the U.S., pricing is determined by market competition among pharmaceutical companies, which have little incentive to keep prices down.
When accused of price gouging in the U.S. market, the companies claim that the high costs are required to pay off sunken research and development costs — averaging over $1 billion per drug, according to Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. The claim has been debated, with some studies estimating the cost at more like $50 million to $75 million. Regardless, because other countries force pharmaceutical companies to sell drugs cheaply abroad, U.S. residents are stuck with the bill, essentially subsidizing the affordable prescription drugs in other countries.
snip---
When he was drafting what would eventually become the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama considered adding a section that would enable Medicare to negotiate drug prices. However, he gave that away as a bargaining chip to gain the overall support of the pharmaceutical industry.
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/11/7/is-canada-the-answertohighpriceofmedsinus.html
Free Market Capitalism: Let The Buyer Beware.
Insurance companies have the art of deception down through omission,
evasion, bait and switch, and fine print down to an exact science. Checking the formulary of an insurance company is not always easy, especially after you've been totally beaten down dealing with deliberately insane bureaucracies who eat up most of your spare time when you are just trying to get straight answers from them.
It took me 63 days of intense frustrating, mind numbing struggle in overcoming built in programmatic stupidity to get my insurance plan through the ACA, through no fault of my own, and once I finally got approved for a plan, I was not permitted to examine the overwhelming majority of the details of the plans available to me before I chose one.
Fortunately, I got lucky, and my plan seems to be a good one. However, they apparently deceived my optometrist into believing that they would pay for my thorough eye exam; the optometrist told me the insurance company would pay, and after the exam found out that they were not getting paid. But the optometrist was honorable, and did not require me to pay, and just ate the cost of my exam, because they acknowledged that had told me my insurance was going to cover.
People should not have to go through all this deliberately deceitful, complex maze of crap devised by profit seeking businesspeople whose job it is to rip people off in any way possible in order to receive health services and health insurance benefits.
It sucks, it's evil, and I aim to help destroy the private health insurance industry as quickly as possible by any non-violent means necessary.
I believe that Mother Earth is a living being, and that all the motherfrackers
who are responsible for the insane practice of fracking are criminal perverts. Who is more deranged? They're all deranged; there is no dark side of environmental destruction, it's all dark.
"My young men shall never work, men who work cannot dream; and wisdom comes to us in dreams. You ask me to plow the ground. Shall I take a knife and tear my mothers breast? ...
...We simply take the gifts that are freely offered. We no more harm the earth than would an infant's fingers harm its mother's breast. But the white man tears up large tracts of land, runs deep ditches, cuts down forests, and changes the whole face of the earth. You know very well this is not right. Every honest man knows in his heart that this is all wrong. But the white men are so greedy they do not consider these things...
...Each one must learn for himself the highest wisdom. It cannot be taught in words."
~ Smohalla, 1891
Water pistols (waterarms) with a 20 ft range have been 100% effective for me.
It takes about a week of practice with a waterarm to shoot them accurately. I prefer the Super Soaker Zipfire Blaster, it's compact, semi-auto, has an adequate magazine, shoots a quick short burst, and has an accurate range of over 20 ft.
The longer range gives you a good head start if you should need to run, but once you get really good at using a waterarm you can learn to stash it quick, and if you learn how to act innocent the irate smoker never even knows who doused their butt.
Always remember to shoot from the side of the smoker, never from the front, so that you don't hit your victim with any of the water, because in some states this can be considered an assault, which is actually kind of strange, because water is harmless, but second hand smoke is not. You'd think deliberately subjecting people to second hand smoke would be considered an assault instead of harmless water, but hey, that's capitalism for ya.
Because their smoke was drifting into my home, I started dousing my neighbors butts from a well camouflaged blind about 20 ft away from their patio, and after a few weeks of scanning the skies for incontinent birds ("goddam bird shit on my cigarette again, Dickie Wayne, can you believe it?1?1?") immediately after their smokes got doused, and not understanding why their smokes keep going out, my neighbors decided to start smoking inside their trailer. I feel kind of bad about this, because their 80 year old mom stays inside the trailer, and she carries one of those oxygen mask/oxygen tank thingees on her wheelchair (right next to her cigarettes) because of her advanced terminal emphysema.
That's one way that really works.
(Oh, yeah ~ Never use pepper spray. The second hand spray is harmful and can drift, and cause serious discomfort for any innocent bystanders)
It's possible that it was hijacked and hidden, but someone very clever would
have had to do some serious long range planning and environmental engineering in order pull it off.
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